Washington favored “limited government.” True — and false. Our first president led a federal government much smaller than today’s colossus. But Washington advocated a strong central government, embraced some deficit spending and raised taxes.

Politics in Washington’s era was kinder and gentler than today’s version. False. While political parties were in their infancy, the political press was in its prime. Broadsheets labeled the first president a “tyrant,” a “monocrat” plotting against the people. He was even “swiftboated,” with critics distorting his military career.

Washington: A Life

Ron Chernow

The Penguin Press

$40; 904 pages

Immediately after George Washington’s death in 1799, mourners deified the man. Eulogists called the departed leader “our Savior” and “our Redeemer.” Mason Weems, the parson whose slapped-together biography of Washington appeared in 1800, praised his “godlike height of glory,” while a popular print showed him ascending to heaven on a cloud, a cherub crowning him with laurels.

Others, though, insisted that idolatry missed the point.

“Simple truth is his best, his greatest eulogy,” Abigail Adams wrote.

Ron Chernow, a biographer whose works have breathed new life into Alexander Hamilton, J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller, largely agrees with Adams. But after scouring the Washington papers still being edited by the University of Virginia, he has found that the truth of this man’s life is not entirely simple.

“His unerring judgment, sterling character, rectitude, steadfast patriotism, unflagging sense of duty, and civic-mindedness — these exemplary virtues were achieved only by his ability to subdue the underlying volatility of his nature and direct his entire psychological makeup to the single-minded achievement of a noble cause,” Chernow writes.

A man of titanic achievements and a cold, austere public image, Washington is a daunting figure for modern biographers. Chernow skillfully chips away centuries of myth and folklore, freeing the man from the monument. He delivers an imperfect man who is all the more inspiring, as he rose to greatness despite human foibles and failings.

Most Americans know the outlines of this life. The young Virginia planter first won wider attention when, fighting for the British against the French, he coolly rallied troops during a crushing defeat in the Pennsylvania wilderness. While a slow convert to the cause of American independence, he was a firebrand by 1775 when the Continental Congress appointed him commander of American forces.

It’s difficult to see how the American Revolution, a long, sporadic conflict, could have been won without Washington. But his military prowess was overshadowed by his sheer determination. Battling the world’s mightiest military, Washington cajoled, browbeat, inspired and somehow held together a ragtag force that sometimes numbered as little as 3,500.